Storyboard Pro: A Free Video Pre-Production Solution

Tired of storyboarding your videos with pen and paper and later having to scrap them or restart with new ideas? Save yourself the hassle, time and paper with Storyboard Pro.

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With Storyboard Pro you could easily share the visual plan of your video with other members of your project, be they actors, cameramen or video editors.

The best part is you don’t have to open your wallet at all to get started. Storyboard Pro is freeware available for Windows and Mac.

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Installation

No installation is required.

After you download a 7MB RAR file from the Atomic Learning website, you unzip it and double click on StoryBoard Solution , the icon with a PLAY button on it.

For ease of use, you would want to create a shortcut on your desktop so that you won’t have to navigate to the installation directory each time you want to launch the program.

On launching the program you’ll see 5 filmstrip icons to your left: List View, Print View, Worksheet, Options and Quit.

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Starting

You start off keying in your movie name and the producer (s).You are now ready to work in the List View. This is where the major portion of your storyboarding work will be done.

You begin with a single panel, with a blank film strip to the left. You can select the shot type as video, still, audio, music or title and set the length of the shot in seconds.

You can fill in the clip title and description. Towards your right, you can enter notes in the film tip or edit tip boxes. This would come useful to your cameraman or video editor.

When you right click on the filmstrip, you have the option to insert a picture, object or sound to illustrate your shot. This feature comes handy if you have ready multimedia files to use with your storyboard.

Done with the first panel, you can add more panels by clicking on the New button at the top half of the window.

What if you want to move the order of the panels?Say you would like to move the third panel to the first. You click on Order No. and type 1 into the third panel and type 3 into the first panel. When you click on the Sort button the panels will be automatically rearranged.

You can also insert a new shot at any time while working on any of the panels. Just click on the Insert button to the right of the panel and a dialog box asks whether you want to place the new shot above or below the current shot.

After saving a copy of your storyboard, you’re ready to print it out and you have the option to output it with or without filming or editing tips.

One attractive feature of the program is the Worksheets option. These are blank storyboard worksheets which you could use to insert shots while on location or when brainstorming with your crew. You can choose between the 4 or 6 shots per page worksheet.

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Help

No help file is built into the program, but extensive video tutorials are available at the developer’s website.

You can also click on Directions on the bottom half of the main screen. You’re taken to a new window where the features of the main functions of the program are explained in the form of captions. Double click on any caption and you’ll be taken to the particular video tutorial at the developer’s website. If you don’t have access to the Internet, you would have to be content with the text explanatory notes which you could access by clicking on the red T available on every caption.

Once you are in this window, you may find it difficult to get back to the main menu. There seems to be no link to do so.The link is there but is not visible to the naked eye because black text is set against a dark gray background. You will find it down below on the window.

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Conclusion

Storyboard Pro lacks illustration features which are covered in many mainstream storyboarding software.But if you don’t have the budget for such costly programs, consider Storyboard Pro a boon for storyboarding your next home movie or college video project.